The immigration debate within the
Republican Party's conservative base continues to lurch further and further to
the right. In the current environment, any proposal that falls short of rounding up every undocumented immigrant and shipping them across the border exposes its proponent to attacks from the far-right.

Nothing
illustrates the sharp turn of the party's base like the baffling
immigration philosophies of Texas governor and 2012 presidential candidate Rick
Perry (R), who recently suggested that people favoring harsh policies toward illegal immigrants "don't have a heart," but is now belittling any discussion about crafting a comprehensive
immigration plan. Perry is compounding this absurdity by touting the recent endorsement
of his candidacy by Maricopa County (AZ) sheriff and anti-immigrant reality
show star Joe Arpaio (R). He appeared Thursday on Fox News' America Live with host Megyn Kelly:

PERRY: Well obviously, we're
talking about securing the border, because that's the issue that has to be
addressed first, Megyn. And that's one
the reasons Sheriff Arpaio came in and endorsed me yesterday. Sheriff Joe is
one of the strongest people in the country when it comes to immigration, and in
New Hampshire and Iowa and those early primary states, having someone like him
stand up and say 'listen, this is the only person who's actually had the
experience of dealing with putting that border issue, uh, secure the border
with boots on the ground, the aviation assets.' He knows that I've been dealing
with it for ten years.

And so, until we get the border
secure, all of these conversations about how we're going to deal with the 11
plus million people that are here, is just that — an intellectual engagement,
it's a conversation. Everyone understands that you've got to secure that border
first. And I'm the only person that has the experience, of the people running
on the Republican side, of securing the border. And we have a president who
says the border is safer than it's ever been, and we all know that is
absolutely nonsense; Hezbollah, Hamas, the Iranians — all using that border to
penetrate into America.

Watch:

Presidential candidates often receive unseemly or unwanted
endorsements from controversial public figures. But it says something about the
state of the immigration debate and about Perry's judgment that he is enthusiastically
hyping an endorsement from a cartoonish figure who forces inmates to sleep in tents, engages
in racial profiling
and once responded to allegations of racism by saying, "My daughter has adopted
children of various ethnicities. I got a black, a Mexican with down syndrome
even. And yet I'm the racist."

Substantively, Perry's stance on immigration remains obtuse.
He begrudgingly admits
to Kelly that rounding up 11 million undocumented immigrants for deportation is
not realistic, but refuses to back down from his previous statement that, as
president, he would
"detain and deport every illegal alien who is apprehended in this country." Only
deporting immigrants who are "apprehended" would allow undocumented, but
otherwise law-abiding, immigrants to remain in the country — in other words,
it's a plan similar to Gingrich's, which Perry nonetheless attempted to poison
with the label of "amnesty."